Ways to reopen a question?

Question

I want to understand the logic of collecting 5 votes to reopen a question!. For instance, I believe that I have a pertinent answer to the question posed here: Do Nastika and Astika have direct translations in English?

The moderator "Sarvabhouma" has marked this question as duplicate with another question and closed it! Now it requires 4 more votes to open it!

It seems unfair that to close a question only the "intelligence" of one moderator is sufficient, whereas the open a question 5 votes need to be collected.

Anyhow, if any moderators, would like to open this question, I will be thankful as I can provide a textual answer which is not dependent on personal and often biased interpretation!

Answer 1

Sarvabhouma isn't a moderator. As of now these are moderators.

Whenever a user with reputation more than 15 flags a question as duplicate or casts a close vote (if they have >500 points (in case of beta sites) or >3000 (in case of graduated sites)), a dialogue appears only to the author of the question. That dialogue has two options. "Yes that solves my problem" which instantly closes the question as the duplicate of the suggested one and the "No, I'll edit to explain why" prompts user to edit their question to explain why it isn't a duplicate.

Now if the user clicks on "Yes" before getting 5 close votes on the question, the question closes as the duplicate of the suggested one with a close vote from Community♦. If you hover over the "Community", you'll see why it participated in closing the question as duplicate.

It is to be noted that User -1 (Community) isn't really a user but it's a bot.

If you think a question should be reopened, you have 3 options:

1. Cast a reopen vote (if you have enough reputation points). This will make the question to appear in review queue where reviewers can decide the fate. Commenting why it should be reopened would be great.
2. Post on meta explaining why
3. Drop a message in chat explaining why
4. Cast a flag for moderator intervention and explaining the situation

Getting a reopen vote from a moderator will instantly open the question while getting that from a user with the privileges to cast vote will get that question in reopen queue where all other users with same privilege can decide the fate of the question.

I would recommend using the first the option because:

1. Not all people hangout in chat
2. You get to know what community thinks

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Further Reading:

1. Who is the Community user?
2. Privileges - cast close & reopen votes

Answer 2

The logic behind 5 votes needed is community moderation. It is to avoid unilateral moderation.

Hinduism Stack Exchange is moderated by you.

This is what the review page says. So the users with privilege can cast their votes to reopen or close a question.

Now coming to the specific case, the question was not closed by my vote. It was closed by the binding vote of OP who asked the question was satisfied with the linked question and the answers written to it. Then they clicked "That solved my problem". So the point to be noted is the OP themselves was satisfied with the vote. It's also worth noting that duplicates are sometimes suggestions.

What is the relationship between Hinduism and atheism? contains a couple of questions about Atheism. It asks what is the relationship between Hinduism and atheism, it asks whether all Hindus follow atheism. One of the sub question asked in the body is as follows:

Can you also cite the Vedas or Upanishads which talk about atheism in Hindu religion?

The same was also asked in another question which I have voted to close. Do Nastika and Astika have direct translations in English?

I ask the users of the site to read the body of the question too because the title alone is not the question. The main question is asked in the body only. We still have questions with titled "Question regarding X", "Shloka regarding Pandavas" which do not give any detail or hint what is the question actually about. For that we look into the body which has an explanation. So the body of the closed question asks

Is there an accurate translation of the words in English ?

Also, what do they exactly mean as per Hindu scriptures ?

The direct translation of the words is given in the answers written to What is the relationship between Hinduism and atheism?. Be Happy's answer gives what is the definition of that according to different schools of Hinduism, cite how word Nastika is used and other answers also give meaning. We are free to post new answers to the question with a different point of view also.

This is when we can vote to close a question as a duplicate. From Stack Exchange faq How should duplicates be handled

Questions may be duplicates if they have the same (potential) answers. This includes not only word-for-word duplicates, but also the same idea expressed in different words.

There are many very closely related questions whose answers would be potentially same. In such cases, duplicate works as a suggestion. Many sites close very closely related questions and popular questions even though they'renot exact duplicates to avoid repetition of same answers. Even our site has such policy for some questions like "Death in family - does the marriage need to be postponed". In these cases, duplicate vote works as suggestion. If the OP is happy with the closure, question will be closed.

In this case, it's not only the same idea expressed, they even have same words "Hindu scriptures" in their bodies. The answers also cite scriptures, more importantly, OP accepted that question with their binding vote (if questions are entirely different and closed as dupe by OP themselves, we can take an effort to reopen but the questions are very closely related, old question covers new question. We should not only look at the accepted answer. Since there's still scope for new answers, we are not limiting points of view. As said already, we can post new answers.

Also refer to In what scenarios 'Community' user cast a close as duplicate vote?. Can we clarify to the OP that their question is not yet closed and the duplicates are only suggestions?